МАРГАРЕТ ЭТВУД в переводах Михаила Гаспарова

Margaret Eleanor Atwood

b.1939

МАРГАРЕТ ЕЛЕОНОРА ЭТВУД

НАЧАЛО

Начинается так:
вот рука,
вот глаз,
вот на бумаге
синяя рыба, почти
как глаз. Вот рот,
как О, или как луна.
Если луна, то желтая.
За окном дождь,
зеленый, потому что лето.
За дождем деревья и мир,
круглый,
цвета девяти карандашей.
Этот мир - он большой и трудный.
Правильно: черти его красным,
он в огне.
Вот ты выучил эти слова,
а слов больше, чем можно выучить.
Слово "рука"
плывет над рукой,
как над озером маленькое облачко.
Я держу твою руку, как теплый камушек,
меж двух слов.
Вот твоя рука, вот моя, вот мир.
Он круглее и цветнее, чем кажется.
У него есть начало и конец.
Вот
то, к чему ты хочешь вернуться, -
твоя рука.

ВАРИАЦИИ НА ТЕМУ ЛЮБВИ

Этим словом мы затыкаем дыры:
дыры в форме туза червей,
вовсе не похожего на сердце.
Слово можно завернуть в кружева
и продать. Натереться им, как мазью,
или стряпать на нем. Оно битком
набивает книги и журналы.
Мы вдвоем. Но оно для нас
слишком коротко, чтоб заполнить
придавившую нас межзвездную
пустоту, наготу, глухоту.
Не любви боимся мы, а страха.
Это слово, которого для нас
мало, но без него нельзя:
это звук в металлическом безмолвии,
это рот, говорящий "о!"
то ли в изумлении, то ли в муке,
это пальцы, вцепившиеся в утес
над водой. Держись или выпустись.

ВАРИАЦИИ НА ТЕМУ СНА

Я хотела бы видеть, как ты спишь
(этому не бывать). Я хотела бы
видеть, как ты спишь. Я хотела бы
спать с тобою, войти в твой сон
и пройти с тобой через солнечный
лес, где синие листья и три луны,
где твой страх,
я хотела бы дать тебе серебряную
ветвь, цветок, петушиное слово
от той муки в сердцевине сна.
Я хотела бы идти за тобой
по той длинной лестнице вверх, на свет,
стать той лодкой, в которой ты,
лежа рядом, войдешь, как вздох,
быть тем вздохом, который лишь на миг
наполняет тебя: такой же
незаметною и необходимой.

НОВОЛУНИЕ

Темнота не ждет повода -
словно горе, она всегда при нас:
темнота, в которой
звезды над листвой, как стальные гвозди
без числа. Мы идем вдвоем
в новолунье по палым мертвым листьям
между смутных ночных камней,
днем розовато-серых,
пористых и легких от мха,
днем зеленого.
Я беру тебя за руку - если бы
ты был здесь, она была бы рукой.
Я хочу показать тебе темноту,
чтобы ты ее не боялся.
Ты войди в нее - в ней не страшно
ни шагам, ни взгляду.
Ты запомни ее: она придет
и к тебе в свой срок -
внешность минет, темнота останется,
а что сможешь сохранить - сохрани.
Мы у берега.
Плещет озеро,
крик совы на той стороне -
как комар над ухом.
В водной шири
опрокинуто все: и звезды,
и плотина, и темнота,
сквозь которую так долго идти,
просветляется.

YOU BEGIN
You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.
Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colours of these nine crayons.
This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.
Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world, which is
round but not flat and has more colours
than we can see.
It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.

VARIATIONS ON THE WORD LOVE


This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It's the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn't what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
This word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger-
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.

VARIATIONS ON THE WORD SLEEP

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend, towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

INTERLUNAR

Darkness waits apart from any occasion for it;
like sorrow it is always available.
This is only one kind,

the kind in which there are stars
above the leaves, brilliant as steel nails
and countless and without regard.

We are walking together
on dead wet leaves in the intermoon
among the looming nocturnal rocks
which would be pinkish grey
in daylight, gnawed and softened
by moss and ferns, which would be green,
in the musty fresh yeast smell
of trees rotting, each returning
itself to itself

and I take your hand, which is the shape a hand
would be if you existed truly. I wish to show you
the darkness you are so afraid of.

Trust me. This darkness
is a place you can enter and be
as safe in as you are anywhere;
you can put one foot in front of the other
and believe the sides of your eyes.
Memorize it. You will know it
again in your own time.
When the appearances of things have left you,
you will still have this darkness.
Something of your own you can carry with you.

We have come to the edge:
the lake gives off its hush;
in the outer night there is a barred owl
calling, like a moth
against the ear, from the far shore
which is invisible.
The lake, vast and dimensionless,
doubles everything, the stars,
the boulders, itself, even the darkness
that you can walk so long in
it becomes light.

"You Begin" ©1987, 1990, 1998 By Margaret Atwood, reprinted by permission of the Author. Currently available in the United States in SELECTED POEMS II, published in by Houghton Mifflin; available in Canada in the collection SELECTED POEMS 1964-1984, published by Oxford University Press; and available in the United Kingdom in the collection EATING FIRE, by Virago Press."

"Variations on the word love" ©1990 by Margaret Atwood, reprinted by permission of the Author. Currently available in Canada in the collection SELECTED POEMS 1964-1984, published by Oxford University Press."

"Variations on the word sleep" ©1987, 1990, 1998 By Margaret Atwood, reprinted by permission of the Author. Currently available in the United States in SELECTED POEMS II, published in by Houghton Mifflin; available in Canada in the collection SELECTED POEMS 1964-1984, published by Oxford University Press; and available in the United Kingdom in the collection EATING FIRE, by Virago Press."

"Interlunar" ©1987, 1990, 1998 By Margaret Atwood, reprinted by permission of the Author. Currently available in the United States in SELECTED POEMS II, published in by Houghton Mifflin; available in Canada in the collection SELECTED POEMS 1964-1984, published by Oxford University Press; and available in the United Kingdom in the collection EATING FIRE, by Virago Press

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